


9 minutes

by untouchableface



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Accidental Touching, F/M, Road Trips, Season/Series 01, Stargazing, X-Files OctoberFicFest, ruined clothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-18 23:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12398670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untouchableface/pseuds/untouchableface
Summary: inspired by recent events.a series of drabbles, little details and slices of everyday life for our two favourite agents.





	1. okobogee mud

She may have been able to out-dance almost anyone, but Ginger Rogers had never chased aliens. More realistically, she had never ran full-out over soft earth, following a half-mad man who was driven equally by his ghosts and his convictions. Backwards and in heels indeed.

Scully couldn’t be mad, not really. They’d done well, all things considered; they’d reunited a family and there had only been one corpse. There would be paperwork and explanations to give, but nothing beyond what she could handle or mitigate between Mulder’s and Blevins’ diametrically opposed viewpoints.

Her pulse echoed in her temples as the last tape finished, the playback clicking over to stop with a sudden shudder. A soft breath hitched at the back of Scully’s throat, deft fingers pressing along her jawline to release the tension she didn’t realize she had been holding there. It hurt as much as any visceral wound, a knot in her stomach that would have made her throw up if she had been someone else. She was not weak. Secrets. The silent, shadowed pain that radiated off her new partner made so much more sense now that she had bore witness to his history as it played out in his own trembling voice. All the small details he would probably never confide to her.

This was neither the first nor the last time that Dana Scully would find herself feeling wholly unprepared for the road ahead. A soft sigh escaped berry-stained lips as her ruined heels caught her eye. The Iowa forest had been unforgiving in more ways than one and she chastised herself for failing to plan for the unforeseen. She had managed to keep up - barely - by running on the balls of her feet, but if the situation had been more dire… no. She would not go down that route, at least not today. Even her wide-based kitten heels had begun to sink into the earth as she stood near the shore of that small lake, and that had been enough to make her feel quietly helpless in ways she could not yet vocalize.

If nothing else, Scully made a mental note to always keep a spare pair of hiking boots in her luggage going forward. She knew, deep down, that neither her credit card nor the cost of potential human lives could afford her to be unobservant or slow. One day at a time was an acceptable plan; it had to be.

As she looked away, the mud in piles at her doorway pled guilty to crimes she could not yet confess.


	2. beltway traffic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set early season one; their first car ride together in heavy traffic.

On a good day, the drive time between DC and Baltimore was about an hour. But this was not a good day and _smooth sailing_ was not even remotely how Scully would describe the current flow of traffic.  
  
Or, for that matter, her partner’s ability to navigate said “vehicular fuckery”, which seemed to be Mulder’s current curse of choice. Thus far, their drives together had been relaxed as they cruised along more rural roads, alternating between sitting in comfortable silence and pouring over the case files they were investigating. It was a pattern she had quickly grown accustomed to in the handful of weeks they’d been working together. With this new set of data - Mulder’s tendency to tailgate other vehicles too closely, the tension radiating from his side of the car - Scully felt her positive confirmation bias regarding his driving habits rapidly evaporating. Mulder navigating the I-95 at midday was a slightly terrifying side of him she had not witnessed until now. Next time, she would insist on driving if they would be traversing an urban centre.  
  
“Gum?” It was a well-calcuated offering. Knowing that his usual go-to was sunflower seeds - a snack he needed at least one hand to consume, a feat certainly unsafe if not impossible under current conditions - Scully assumed that having something to chew on would help mitigate his current levels of stress.  
  
“Sure, thanks.” Mulder’s upper lip curled into a half-smirk as he reached over to grab the foil-wrapped stick. “Shit!” A car from another lane suddenly merged into theirs, dead ahead, as Mulder’s hand jerked back to the wheel.  
  
‘That was too close!’ The stick of gum dropped to the floorboards as Scully’s fingers instinctively dug into the cloth seat. From her persepective, they had narrowly avoided a collision. ‘Go limp in the case of impact in order to minimize injury. Tell him to stop following the other cars so closely.’ Competing thoughts raced through Scully’s head as adrenaline flowed through her body. Picking this moment to critique his urban driving habits would go nowhere good, she realized, so she diverted her attention back to the task at hand.  
  
“You just focus on the road. I’ll unwrap it for you.” Retrieving the stick of gum from the floor, she peeled off the wrapper and turned to Mulder, holding the gum up to his lips. An almost-unconscious reflex, she had developed the habit as part of being a dutiful navigator on car trips with Jack. Read maps. Announce turns before they appeared. Open wrappers and bottles. But this was new territory with someone she was just getting to know, and as her brain caught up to her body a split second later, Scully found herself laser-focused on the tickle of his exhale, how soft and slick his lips felt.

Mulder’s eyes widened for a split second, an involuntary reaction to the intimacy of the simple gesture. He could tell that her ease meant the motion was something instinctual, something she’d probably done a thousand times; that did not make it any less exhilarating for him. As he closed his mouth around the proffered gum, her finger brushed along his lower lip for a brief second. His frustration at the cars around them took a back seat to the sudden fluttering in his stomach and nerves flaring all along his spine. ‘Maybe we should get caught in traffic more often,’ he grinned to himself. 

 


	3. alight over houston

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> season one, post-Space.

As the plane reached crusing altitude, the cabin lights dimmed to accommodate the late hour. With a sigh, Scully allowed her eyes to finally close. A lifetime ago, she had loved the thrill of flying: planes rumbling down the runway as they jettisoned into the air, the criss-cross lines of roads and and buildings slowly shrinking below. But now, she was just tired, the kind of quiet exhaustion that seeps under your skin. Between the days spent living out of a suitcase, the lack of sleep, the near-constant air conditioning, and the stuffy hotel air, she could feel the beginnings of an illness prickling the back of her throat.

A sharp elbow to her hand caused Scully’s eyes to snap back open suddenly. Mulder, his face now pressed to the window, had rid himself of his suit jacket and had buried himself under it to block the remaining light, like a photographer using an ancient camera. It was certainly not the most compromising position she’d found him in, given his taste in skin mags, but it could easily qualify as strange behaviour.

“Mulder?” Her voice betrayed the exhaustion in her bones.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” His face reappeared from behind his jacket, a sheepish half-smile on his face. “I just...” He was tired too, almost shell-shocked. The sort of war-torn tired that comes from living out a childhood fantasy, only to bear witness to the men behind the curtain that pull the strings.

“It’s alright.” She returned the half-smile, almost reflexively. “What are you doing?”

“C’mere, Scully.” He snaked his arm around her shoulder, almost pulling her into his lap, as he drew the suit jacket around them both so that it blocked out the ambient light from the plane. “It’s nearly a new moon.” Below, the lights of Houston faded into blackness as the stars outside came into full view.

“Wow.” The only disruption was the pulsing beacon at the end of the plane’s wing, otherwise the sky was a perfect inky sea of stars. Her eyes scanned for a constellation she could easily recognize, like Cassiopea or the Big Dipper, but nothing immediately presented itself. It had been years since Ahab taught her to read star charts; he would no doubt be disappointed in her lapses.

“You don’t get this kind of view in DC.”

“No, you don’t.” She could feel the warmth in his chest as she took in all there was to see. Everything in the moment amounted to a silent perfection, broken only by a soft out-breath. Her head dipped and her eyes closed - just for a moment - before she composed herself, politely extricating herself from beneath his jacket.

If Mulder was started by her sudden motion, he gave no reaction. “I’ll wake you shortly before we land,” he offered, before disappearing back beneath the jacket.

“Thanks.” Scully’s eyes slipped closed again as she tried to get comfortable against the mostly upright seat. There would be other flights and there would be other skies; they could never linger too long in the liminal space that travel afforded.


End file.
